Royal commission: Abuse still haunts Queensland man four decades on

It came in November this year when the school teacher who molested him while on a school camp, Wilfred Mentink, was thrown in jail.

Mr Johnston, who was just 14 when he was sexually abused, said the vile acts he had to endure still haunt him to this day.

His heart goes out to the thousands of child abuse victims hoping for justice today as the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hands down its final report.

“We want action. Really people have to take the attitude [that] it all starts now,” he said.

The damage caused

The former Salisbury High School student easily recalls the frightening school camp trip at Mount Barney in the Scenic Rim, when he and several of his fellow students fell victim to Mentink’s predatory behaviour.

“The teacher proceeded to wander around all weekend naked,” he said.

“Some of the things we witnessed was an abomination at the way kids should be treated by an adult.

Now 55, he would like to stare down his abuser and make him account for what he did.

“Your brain is rewired where you do not know what is going on and have to have years of therapy to get to the point where you can function.

“I find myself with five kids from three different mothers.”

He said some of what happened haunts him.

“You might be a narcissistic man. I do not know why you choose to have relationships with children rather than adults,” he said.

“That is an issue for you mate

“That is something you need to live with and think very deeply while you are in jail about what you have done.”

‘We want action’

Mr Johnston now serves on the Queensland Child Sexual Abuse Legislative Reform Committee and advocates for those affected by abuse.

He said the royal commission had made some people accountable, but not enough.

“People who have covered up this sort of stuff need to be held to account,” he said.

“There is not one person in Australia that I am aware of that has been convicted of concealing these sorts of crimes.

“But I am sceptical that things will change.”

On the final day of the royal commission yesterday, Justice Peter McClellan handed a book of survivors’ harrowing accounts to the National Library of Australia.

“The conjunction of events that the royal commission has examined can only be described as a national tragedy,” Justice McClellan said.

Queensland Child Protection Committee chair Elizabeth Kobierski said those words are not much different to those uttered by then prime minister Julia Gillard when she announced the commission in 2012.

“She called child abuse vile and hideous,” Ms Kobierski said.

“The beginning and the end. Now people have recognised this has been a shocking experience for many young people.

“I notice some 15,000 people have come forward to different ways to tell their stories.

“I do not think that represents all those people impacted or currently impacted.

“This is an ongoing issue that we all have to pay attention to.

“In my strongest words I can say stand up adults, let’s be protective, let’s be aware and make sure our children get the best possible chance they have moving forward.”

Convicted paedophile held in East Timor over child porn

A convicted Australian paedophile has been remanded in custody in East Timor after being found with pornographic images of Timorese children.

Wilfred Mentink, 56, is also facing charges of illegally entering East Timor after defying a deportation order issued in June.

Mentink was arrested by United Nations and East Timorese police last week when they searched his yacht and found nearly 40 items relating to child pornography, including photographs, CDs and two laptop computers.

He was remanded in custody for 30 days by an East Timorese court while further investigations are carried out.

Mentink was jailed for six years in the Australian state of Queensland in 1993 after pleading guilty to child sex abuse charges.

Australian pedophile given 48 hours to leave

A convicted Australian pedophile has been ordered to leave East Timor after a pioneering joint operation involving Australian and East Timorese police.

Dili immigration authorities gave former Queenslander Wilfred Mentink 48 hours to leave the country after he sailed into Dili harbour on Wednesday on board his yacht Loris.

Acting United Nations Police Commissioner Dennis McDermott said Mr Mentink had been turned back after failing to declare his convictions on immigration entry documents.

“It’s a first example of co-operation on this question,” he said. Australian and East Timorese police had been tracking the yacht’s movements before it arrived in Dili.

In September 1993 Mentink pleaded guilty in a Queensland court to charges of having sex with a minor and indecently dealing with another minor.

He received a nine-year sentence, later reduced on appeal to six years, and was released on parole in 1996.

Customs and immigration officials boarded and searched the yacht early on Wednesday, later informing Mr Mentink he could not land because he had made false statements on an immigration entry form.

Bernadette McMenamin, of the child protection group Child Wise, said it was “an excellent development”.

Speaking from Melbourne, she said it pointed to the need for Australia to go further, by obliging convicted pedophiles to report to police before leaving the country, following British practice.

“In this case they have turned back someone who could have seriously harmed East Timorese children, who are among the most vulnerable in the world,” she said. “If there is not closer monitoring, East Timor could go the way of Cambodia.”

East Timorese police are increasingly concerned about pedophile and prostitution rings, whose clients are mainly international.

Teacher sentenced for series of sexual offences

A 57-year-old man has today, Tuesday 22 August 2017, been sentenced in connection with a number of child sex offences.

Glyn Barrington Jones, formerly of Major Mitchell Drive, Brisbane, Australia, was charged in January 2016 by officers from Norfolk Constabulary’s Children Abuse Investigation Unit, with 13 offences including 11 counts of indecent assault and two of attempted indecent assault.

Jones pleaded guilty yesterday (Monday 21 August 2017) to seven of the indecent assaults. The other offences will remain on file.

The assaults started while he was a trainee and also took place while he was in post as a Physical Education teacher in Norfolk and Devon. The offences he was convicted of relate to six female victims and were committed between 1979 and 1996. All the victims were aged 16 or under at the time.

When sentencing Jones to five years in prison, Judge Anthony Bate described his offences as having “an enduring impact” on the victims with Jones continuing to lead an “outwardly respectable life as a man of apparent good character” while in fact being a “clandestine sex offender since age of 19.”

Following today’s Norwich Crown Court appearance, Detective Constable Kim Taylor who headed the investigation, said: “Jones took complete advantage of his position of trust to encourage his victims to allow him to carry out sex offences having persuaded them that he was in an emotional relationship with them.

“I want to thank all the victims involved in this investigation for their bravery and patience while this case came to court. Although by pleading guilty, he has prevented the victims from having to relive their ordeal through a trial, they should not have been in this position in the first place.

“This enquiry highlights how important we consider all allegations of abuse , non recent or current and should assure other victims of abuse that every report is fully investigated by Norfolk Constabulary, with specialist officers guiding victims through the process.”

Qld child abuser must wear tracker: judge

Christine Flatley, AAP March 26, 2013, 2:24 pm

A man who repeatedly abused children over a 20-year period has failed to convince a court he should have his monitoring anklet removed.

Kevin Michael Loudon was released from jail in 2007 on a strict community-based supervision order after serving multiple lengthy sentences for raping and abusing young boys and girls in far north Queensland.

He breached the supervision order in 2009 and was released back into the community on the provision he wear a GPS tracking device and abide by a curfew.

Late last year lawyers acting for Loudon wrote to Queensland Corrective Services asking that the device and curfew requirements be removed from the order.

Through his lawyers, Loudon argued the anklet caused him stress and anxiety because he couldn’t conceal it easily when in public.

He also argued his good behaviour warranted a relaxation in his restrictions.

However in a written judgment published on Tuesday, Brisbane Supreme Court Justice Martin Daubney disagreed, ruling Loudon was still a risk to the community.

Paedophile paramedic sentenced to 13 years’ jail for sexual abuse of 22 girls across three states

By Isobel Roe

Updated 5 May 2017, 6:28pm

A former Queensland ambulance officer has been sentenced to 13 years in jail for “depraved” sexual abuse of 22 young girls across several states over a 10-year period.

The victims of 49-year-old Jason David Brooker were in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, with the youngest being 11 years old.

Brooker, who was between 38 and 47 years of age at the time of offending, contacted young girls via social media sites Kik, Tagged and Facebook using the name ‘Jaz’, ‘David Bourne’ or ‘David Brook’.

In the District Court in Toowoomba on Tuesday, Brooker pleaded guilty to 57 charges, including maintaining a relationship with a child under 16, carnal knowledge, indecent treatment and making and possessing child exploitation material.

The offending was carried out from Brooker’s home in Warwick on Queensland’s Southern Downs between 2005 and 2015, when one victim raised the alarm and police raided his property.

The court heard Brooker often paid for mobile phone credit for the young girls or offered to “get them into modelling” in exchange for naked photographs, and threatened to release the photos on the internet if the girls did not comply with requests for more explicit material.

Offender videoed sex with 14yo girl

Crown prosecutor Elizabeth Kelso told the court the most serious offending was involving a 14-year-old girl, who he lured via social media pretending to be a 16-year-old boy.

After several webcam chats where Brooker asked the girl to take off her clothes, the pair met multiple times including at a park and a hotel in the Brisbane suburb of Brookside.

Ms Kelso told the court the girl had not told her parents where she was going.

“[Brooker] filmed some of those interactions,” Ms Kelso said.

“In that footage he can be seen undressing the complainant.”

The pair then had sexual intercourse, which was also recorded on video.

‘I was made to feel like a disgusting human being’

During police raids of Brooker’s Warwick home in 2015, officers found a disc containing 83 photos of the girl in states of undress.

The court was read a victim impact statement from that girl, who is now an adult.

“[I] feel sick because of the visual memories,” the statement read.

“I feared for my life and my family’s too — I was made to feel like a disgusting human being.”

Ms Kelso said Brooker would request naked pictures and send pictures of his own genitalia to other girls.

The victims often found out the person they were talking to was not a 16-year-old boy when Brooker turned on his own webcam.

Ms Kelso said Brooker would often tell his victims he loved. If they refused his advances, he would threaten the victims with knowing where they lived.

“If the complainants became reluctant or started to ignore the defendant, he became angry,” she said.

“Where he had provided them money, he would tell them he felt he’d been ripped off.”

Ms Kelso said the most disturbing thing about Brooker’s conduct was the “meticulous” nature of the thousands of photos and videos in his child exploitation collection, found during the police raids.

Some of the exploitation material was of children as young as three years old.

“Not only was is stored electronically, it was also stored on CDs identified with the girls name, age and locations,” Ms Kelso said.

The raids also uncovered stolen prescription drugs and uniforms from the Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS).

Brooker left the QAS during the 10 years of offending and began to work for a private firm as a paramedic.

Offender wrote apology letter, court told

Brooker’s defence lawyer David Jones told the court his client had not shared any of the child exploitation material he created.

He said Brooker’s conduct was largely inexplicable, but he had written a letter of apology and was on the road to rehabilitation.

In sentencing, Judge Deborah Richards told the court one incident involved threatening a young child with harm.

Teacher banned for cyber ‘game’

A TEACHER who made an avatar – a computer alter ego – to interact inappropriately with a 12-year-old in a virtual world has been deregistered and banned for reapplying for four years.

Gregory Stark, 44, was also found by the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) to have hugged and kissed the student inappropriately, sent her inappropriate text messages including one saying, “I love you so much it hurts”, and given her presents including mobile phone credit, CDs and poems.

In a written decision QCAT stated the student gave evidence Mr Stark’s avatar “engaged in sexualised behaviour with her avatar”.

“When questioned about this, Mr Stark was evasive; he consistently claimed he “did not know” whether his avatar was capable of such behaviour,” the written decision stated.

The tribunal also found he had encouraged the student to use a webcam when she was interacting online with him.

“The tribunal considers that the behaviour of Mr Stark is very serious,” QCAT wrote.

“He has admitted that he wanted his relationship with the student to continue after she left school.

“He accessed school records to obtain her home telephone number and address and visited the student at home during the holidays.

“He discouraged the student from telling others of his conduct because he knew it was inappropriate.”

The Queensland College of Teachers (QCT), which began an investigation into Mr Stark after it was informed by the Department of Education there was an investigation into his behaviour last October, told QCAT the teacher’s conduct represented “a campaign of grooming”.

The tribunal ordered Mr Stark’s teaching registration be cancelled and he be banned from reapplying for four years.

He was also ordered to obtain treatment from a registered psychologist within 12 months of reapplying for registration.